


Kissing Frogs, Kissing Princes

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tales, Garden Strolls, Kissing Frogs, Kissing Princes, Politics, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 18:38:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16046264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: For Josiane, there is little difference between kissing frogs and kissing princes.





	Kissing Frogs, Kissing Princes

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Woman Who Rides like a Man the night Jon meets Josiane.

Kissing Frogs, Kissing Princes

“Your mother is happy to see you again.” Josiane could hear the echo of her own banality–colorless as faded fabric–in her ears as Prince Jonathan, who had already asked her to call him Jon, an exciting invitation to intimacy that would thrill her mother, guided her through an autumn garden of begonia and crocus. Dimly, she knew that she shouldn’t be boring the prince her mother hoped for her to marry with scolding that could have come from his mother’s mouth, but the wine, which she had drunk too much off because she was nervous around this foreign prince both their mothers expected her to charm, had dulled her mind to a sleepy inanity. Any more complex conversation was utterly beyond her capabilities. “She missed you while you were in the south.”

“A prince must see the country he will one day inherit and meet the people he will one day rule.” Matching scowls furrowed into Jon’s lips and forehead. Josiane was already learning that this prince was a brooder, prone to frowns and distant stares. She prayed that some of it was the strain of journeying among the fearsome Bazhir clinging to him. “As queen, Mother ought to understand that.” 

As a woman with the Goddess’s tender mercies beating in her breast, Josiane realized that his mother’s aching desire to keep him close was rooted in her being on the brink of death, but, of course, Josiane couldn’t share such thoughts aloud. In the Copper Isles, it was treason–an offense worthy of beheading–to discuss the deaths, however obviously imminent, of kings and queens, and she couldn’t be certain that the same rules didn’t apply in Tortall. 

Perhaps Jon read something of her thoughts in her face, which her mother was forever telling her to wipe blank as a clean slate, because the harsh lines etched into his expression eased as he went on, “I’m happy to see her again, of course, just as I am to meet you.” 

“The pleasure is all mine, I assure you, Your Highness.” Back to banalities, Josiane curtsied, biting back a gasp when she noticed that her skirts had almost swept into a pond studded with lily pads. 

“A frog lurks under the lily pad.” Jon indicated a frog failing to hide, the lump of its head betraying it, beneath a lily pad. 

“It wears the lily pad like a hat.” Josiane’s giggle was too high-pitched, and she blamed it on the wine spiking nerves addled from a new land and strange prince. “Maybe it’s starting a fresh fashion trend among its kind.” 

“Who can fathom the motives of frogs?” Jon bowed her into a stone bench beside the pond and then sat next to her, their clothes kissing. “When we were little, my cousin Gary and I would make a dreadful mess of our clothes when we splashed through garden ponds like this, hunting frogs with nets.” 

“My brothers–Valmar, Deniau, and Dunevon–used to chase frogs with nets as well.” Josiane smiled reminiscently, picturing Jon wading through garden ponds as her brothers had in the Copper Isles. “When they caught one, they would try to scare me by thrusting it into my face.” 

“Were you scared?” Jon draped an arm about her shoulders as if to shield her from a danger long past. 

“Not at all.” Josiane’s mouth twisted with the memory of the wet, warty frogs she had kissed to prove to her brothers that she was fearless. “I kissed the frogs they caught for me, and, though they pretended to be disgusted, they continued catching frogs for me to kiss.” 

“Did you imagine that the frogs would turn into princes if you kissed them like in that fairy tale about a princess kissing a frog into a prince?” Jon’s voice was deep as a croaking frog, and Josiane felt uncomfortably warm as his hand began to massage her shoulder. Dunevon had told her once that raka cooks boiled frogs by slowly increasing the fire’s heat so the frog would be too oblivious to the rising temperature to leap out of the pot. Maybe Jon was doing the same to her, heating her while she was too afraid to jump. 

“No.” Josiane tried to sound cool, as if she weren’t heated by his words and his lingering touch on her shoulder. “I don’t believe in fairy tales where frogs are transfigured into princes by a princess’s kiss.” 

“Excellent. Then you must not believe the reverse: that a prince will turn into a frog by a princess’s kiss.” His lips, damp as a frog’s pickled flesh, pressed against Josiane’s, and when she fluttered her eyelashes shut as a modest maiden was supposed to veil her gaze during her first kiss, she could have imagined that he had been transformed from a frog into a prince. 

When he pulled away, Jon cupped her chin, asking with a tinge of mockery that Josiane didn’t appreciate, “Is kissing a prince better than kissing frogs?” 

Too breathless to speak, Josiane nodded even though kissing a prince had felt the same as kissing a frog. 

“Of course it was.” Jon’s tone was smug as a swelling bullfrog. “All ladies dream of kissing princes and only settle for kissing frogs if they can’t kiss princes.”


End file.
